Not to be too self-serving about it, I’m inclined to respond by saying, “my response is in my book.” In “Noticing Nature,” I describe encounters with “wildness” in very ordinary things. This is not my ideal of “wilderness,” but it is a necessary phenomenon for us humans which teaches us that we are not all there is.

I’m reminded of something in Thoreau’s “Walden,” where he describes an urge to kill and eat a woodchuck, “Not that I was hungry, except for the wildness that he represented.”

A woodchuck? Wildness?

Yes, a woodchuck represents wildness, but only if we take a moment to consider how it goes about its life. If we try, we can see it not as a pest in our garden, but as an independent creature shaped in its body and in its instincts and behavior by untold eons of evolution which drive it to eat our seedling green beans. Yes, it is a pest in our garden, and it is also a wild creature. The difference in our perception of it is in our state of mind.

Similarly, as I describe in “Noticing Nature,” wildness can be observed in pigeons. We tend to regard pigeons with disdain on many levels and in many ways, but they are still wild things living their lives in ways we do not control.

When I observed pigeons mobbing a young eagle, was that an experience of wildness? Absolutely! Was I “in the wilderness?” No, I was stuck in traffic on one of the most heavily traveled roads in New England! Yet even in a rush-hour traffic jam, I was able to experience a “wilderness state of mind.”

Dang! Didn’t mean to write another book here! I think you get the idea.

Chuck